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July / August 2010
Volume 22, Number 4

WHEN IT RAINS, IT OFTEN POURS, AND WHEN it pours, it floods—and unfortunately, that may be more true in Texas than in other states.

In fact, Texas regularly leads the nation in flood fatalities and property damage; one researcher at the University of Texas-San Antonio showed that from 1959-2007, Texas more than tripled the number of flood-related fatalities in every other state, with 840 deaths compared to 265 in runner-up Pennsylvania. Walk down the halls of almost any Texas courthouse, and there will be a photo or several photos of a historic flood that caused millions in property damage.

But thanks to federal programs and improved state resources, county officials have more tools and data to use now than ever before when it comes to protecting their residents from flood dangers and damages, and systematic efforts are underway to continue to improve upon the available information.

The process for improving data related to floodplains and water flows started years ago, largely driven by the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s Flood Map Modernization program, which started in 2003. The goal of that program was to digitize the country’s paper floodplain maps for the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP), so that the maps become more dynamic and can more easily evolve as local information and new flood data is revised and gathered —a worthwhile goal, given the increasing abilities and use of geographic information system (GIS) technologies.

“All of the best available information was used,” said Wes Birdwell, an engineer with Halff Associates, who is working with several counties to update their floodplain map information. “There is a much more usable product now that is accessible over the Internet.

… Everything was lined up with aerial photographs and the 9-1-1 maps so everything was what we call geo-referenced. Everything is in the right place relative to everything else on the map.”

But the digital maps weren’t perfect, and the program left some holes to fill.

Originally, the goal was to digitize all existing floodplain maps, but the program lacked the funding necessary to do so. Instead, it focused on upgrading maps in the more populated areas —which accounted for a total of 92 percent of the nation’s population — and left many rural areas (128 Texas counties) with their outdated paper maps, or with no real floodplain map at all.

And in the 126 Texas counties that did get their paper maps digitized, many of the maps lacked any new local data; the digitized maps were basically an overlaying and matching of older maps from the 1970s and 1980s onto new aerial photographs. In some areas, that meant that the floodplain’s boundary had changed, but without new data to adequately support the changes. Some homeowners who had previously resided outside of a floodplain had to start paying for flood insurance. In other areas, it just meant that the maps continued to lack new, accurate information.

“When FEMA came to town, FEMA would choose counties each year and say, ‘OK, we are going to do these counties this year,’ and they would send out these meeting notices, ‘we’re going to come and we’re going to tell you what we’re going to do in your county to your floodplain maps,’ and very few communities probably were able to respond or understand exactly what was going on in time to understand what was going on and get something in their budget and try to work with FEMA to contribute to the study,” Birdwell said. “There wasn’t sufficient opportunity for communities to understand what the end result of all this was going to be.”

Meanwhile, at the state level, legislators spent the interim before the 2007 legislative session trying to figure out a way to fund a statewide flood mapping services program, or, more specifically, studying “the status of floodplain mapping in Texas communities and the scope of local governments’ floodplain development management authority and make recommendations, as necessary, to enable communities to provide accurate floodplain data and management plans that will facilitate more favorable insurance rates and better protect the lives and property of Texas residents in the event of a natural disaster,” according to the interim charge.

Historically, floodplain mapping hadn’t been a funding priority; the state spent only $85,000 to help aid local governments in keeping their maps updated with good information, almost all of which went toward two employees under the direction of the Texas Commission on Environmental Control. 

“The state isn’t carrying its weight in terms of funding. Members, we are talking about saving lives and property here by letting people and government plan and assess risk with good information,” testified Sen. Royce West during a Senate Intergovernmental Relations Committee hearing in 2007, while working to pass legislation — Senate Bill 1436 — that transferred the state’s responsibility for administration and management of the NFIP from the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality to the Texas Water Development Board.

The legislation also bumped up the funding for floodplain management programs and services to roughly $3 million per year, partly to help rural communities develop updated floodplain maps. “Mapping should be done on a river basin or river system scale, and that will produce a more accurate picture of flood risk for each county,” West said, in regards to the holes filled by the legislation.

Among other benefits, the funding allowed the Texas Water Development Board to hire six regional field representatives that are now working with counties and cities to ensure that the National Flood Insurance Program is correctly administered, and to ensure that commissioners courts and city councils create and enforce related court orders and ordinances that meet the insurance program’s standards.

Both changes — the creation of a statewide agency and the increased funding — were strongly advocated for by the Texas Association of Counties, FEMA and other related entities.

“We are missing out, in Texas, on many opportunities to avail ourselves to federal dollars and programs that would otherwise be available to us if we had a strong, coordinated integrated program at the state level. Currently the activities related to floodplain management are scattered among four different state agencies and it is not Mission One for any of those agencies,” testified Gregory Rothe, the general manager of the San Antonio River Authority.

“With the proposed funding increase, Texas’s working relationship with FEMA can only improve. The current staff, funded largely by FEMA, cannot handle the current program demands,” testified Ross Richardson, with FEMA. “An increased state role with a statefunded program can improve training and education opportunities, the ability of local communities and counties to comply with FEMA’s requirements, improve statewide standards and provide statewide mapping capability by partnering with FEMA’s ongoing map modernization activities.”

Now, three years later, counties are beginning to see the benefits of that state and federal work. The FEMA map modernization program is nearly completed and the Texas Water Development Board has opened its mapping services division, which is working to gather and consolidate information available from the US Army Corps of Engineers.

“In a perfect world, FEMA’s goal is to have the floodplain maps redrawn every five years. A lot of communities have maps that are 20 to 30 years old, going back to the late 70s and 80s,” Birdwell said. “But there are programs available that can help officials produce better floodplain information. We’re working with a lot of communities and counties on the Colorado River and in the Metroplex and in the Houston area to help them better understand the process and what their options are, and what funding help there might be. … When you get your new maps or if you didn’t get new maps, it’s not over. You should still be contacting people, asking questions and staying aware of what is going on.”

Melinda Luna, the team leader for the TWDB’s National Flood Insurance Program Mapping Services division, said the department has several projects and initiatives that are underway, most of which have to do with data collection and consolidation.

“There is a lot of data that hasn’t been collected in the past to systematically look at where the map needs are,” Luna said, adding that one of the first priorities is to improve the elevation data available statewide. Another priority is collecting statewide data on low water crossings, flood easements and high water marks. The agency has already collected data on each of the state’s 55,000 bridges, and it is looking at starting a repository for flood recovery maps.

One significant priority is creating maps in areas where there are none, and doing field analysis of streams and reservoirs that have been ignored in the past.

“Sabine County called and they don’t have a map, but they have the Toledo Bend. That is one of their borders, and the Toledo Bend is the fifth largest reservoir in the United States, but it has never been surveyed,” Luna said. “So what can we use to fill in that gap of data? We’re meeting with the border states, Oklahoma and Louisiana, and trying to figure out how we can work together.”

Even counties that are not participating in the National Flood Insurance Program can benefit from the collected information, Luna added.

“Just because you don’t participate in the National Flood Insurance Program doesn’t mean you don’t need a map, because if your county floods, it floods,” she said.

Bruce Barr, who serves as the floodplains management expert at the Texas Association of Counties, said he is confident the new resources will help counties collect new and improved data and better prepare for future floods, which will also help counties continue to serve residents after a disaster.

“A lot of the talk we’ve been hearing lately especially in the homeland security and emergency response area is continuity, and continuity of government and continuity of services. What this bill will offer is a certain amount of continuity for all counties and all communities at the local level and give each community and county

an ability to respond in an equal and like manner,” he said.

Barr, who is active with the Texas Floodplain Management Association, has been working with the Texas Water Development Board to create a systematic approach for prioritizing the new mapping services, so that the counties most in need of those services have access.

“They’ve done their due diligence in setting up a plan and hiring not only field staff, but mapping staff as well, and they are proceeding well, they are doing a bang-up job,” Barr said. “But there’s a lot of work to do.”

Barr has also worked with the TWDB to develop new regional training workshops for county judges and commissioners about the importance of floodplain mapping, the National Flood Insurance Program requirements, and the use and enforcement of court orders and city ordinances to keep residents and property as safe as economically feasible from flood damage.

“Developing court orders without a map is always a tricky thing. When you have a map, you can say, ‘see, this is where the special flood hazard area is.’ Without the map, counties are developing court orders not in the dark, but without the security of an official document,” Barr said. “The regional field staff is finding out that some counties are not quite up to snuff in the writing of the court orders or the enforcement of those orders. A portion of the class is about the minimum orders required for the NFIP and enforcement of those orders. I talk about how to write and enforce those orders in such a way that you avoid a takings challenge, which is litigation by landowners that what you are doing is causing them to lose use or value of their property.”

The workshops are starting this fall and will continue through 2011.

While ensuring that all counties have floodplain maps is important, updating existing maps may not be an immediate priority or concern for counties that have not seen a lot of growth or development, Birdwell said.

“A lot of times the draining issues maybe are considered to be less important than keeping the roads in shape, keeping the lights on… I think our priorities are right, but if there is no attention being given to drainage issues and your county is growing or poised to grow, then communities would be best served to take a look at this.”

Some counties found that they wanted to appeal the digitized maps, but they could only do so by generating new information, which was often costly.

“Just saying, ‘that’s bad information’ doesn’t help very much and so the appeals have to be fairly technical in nature,” Birdwell said. “The only way to appeal what is on the map is if you have documented evidence.”

Birdwell said it’s important for counties to weigh the cost involved in gathering that evidence against the cost involved in any losses that may result from a flood. That’s because the floodplain maps are not emergency management tools, but risk assessment and prevention tools, and the cost of gathering information about a particular riverbed can cost anywhere from a couple hundred dollars per stream mile to a couple thousand dollars per stream mile, depending on where the county is starting from, information-wise.

“You want to identify what is in that flood zone and what the value of that is,” Birdwell said, adding that that information can then be used to reduce flood damages. “You don’t want to spend a dollar to save a dime, but you do want to spend, say, a quarter to save a dollar, so the idea is what can we do? Sometimes it’s just when we install a bridge, we make it a little bit bigger.”

A true analysis of a streambed includes having good topographical information and water runoff analysis. That type of data used to require a crew of land surveyors that would work for weeks to gather the information, a prohibitively expensive endeavor for most areas. But Birdwell said it is becoming more and more costeffective through the use of LIDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) technology, in which an airplane flies over ground and uses a GPS unit and a laser beam to scan for elevation data quickly and accurately. About 48,000 of the state’s 268,000 square miles have been mapped using LIDAR so far, Birdwell said.

“When water falls out of the sky and hits the ground, we have a really good idea of which direction it is going to go,” he said.